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How Safe is Your Insurance?

Banking with a traditional banking institution carries with it the reassurance that one’s accounts are protected against loss by a government created insurer, namely the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This entity was established by the US government and began operations on January 1, 1934. Most states require that banks are government insured to be licensed and all banks that are members of the Federal Reserve system are required to be FDIC insured. It is interesting to note that for an organization that was originally intended to instill confidence in depositors following the fallout of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the FDIC lists over 4,000 banks that have failed since it began operations. It is interesting to note that almost 75% of those failures occurred in the ten years from 1982-1992 when a reported 2808 banks failed. Many of those failures were caused by the S&L crisis.

The Free Lakota Bank does not employ the insurance of any government entity but rather we utilize an agent of Lloyd’s of London to underwrite all holdings and property. Lloyd’s of London enjoys a stellar reputation over its 325 year history and we are proud to have their backing for this historic endeavor.

The fact that we are not engaged with any government entity has proven to be an extremely attractive point to the many new account holders that have joined us since a South Dakota state agency recently promoted the fact we were entirely independent of the fractional lending system and validated us as a viable option for those who seek an alternative means of storing their property privately and safely. Publicity like that for such a newcomer to the industry is certainly welcome and almost priceless. But it did not come without cost and we want to thank the citizens of South Dakota who pay the salaries of those employees that carried out their investigation of us and issued their glowing report.